Tag: Five Nights At Freddy’s

2025 In Film: Day Three (The Too Flawed)

On By troubledproductionsIn Year round upLeave a comment

A Minecraft Movie
Ups: Fans of the franchise will love it.
The cast are fully into it.
Some good music.
Downs: No appeal to those who aren’t fans of the video game.
Jack Black and Jason Momoa probably should have swapped roles.
Even for a kids movie; far too dumb.
Best Performer: Jason Momoa.
Best Moment: The minecart escape.
Worst Moment: The title drop, it’s far too dumb.
Opening: Steve wants to mine but can’t as is a child, he comes back as an adult. Overly long, plus I feel it would have made more sense if he first arrived in the other dimension as a child, would have explained how he became so good at building.
Closing: Everybody wins and is happy. The song they play isn’t as good as they think it is.
Best Line: Tell my story in song. Keep it metal, keep it heavy, with real instruments.
Original review here

Black Phone 2
Ups: Great music.
Unique visual style.
Downs: Doesn’t really feel like a natural progression.
Completely unnecessary.
Best Performer: Ethan Hawke
Best Moment: Gwen calls out Finn and her dad. Is the only time it feels more than a horror movie.
Worst Moment: The opening
Opening: A young girl makes a phone call. Doesn’t really look like the rest of the film. Does come back later and tie into the narrative, which is a plus. But isn’t something that will hook people in. Plus, the central performance isn’t great.
Closing: The kids bodies are found and are used to help defeat the grabber. Very similar to the first movie.
Best Line: Oh, Finney. You of all people know that “dead” is just a word.
Original review here

Bring Her Back
Ups: Intense.
Terrifying at times.
Downs: Characters act very dumb at times.
Veers from holding the audiences hand to pushing them into a dark room.
Logically muddled.
Best Performer: Sally Hawkins
Best Moment: Oliver eating a knife. Disturbing as hell.
Worst Moment: The death of Andy. Doesn’t feel earned, doesn’t add to the narrative, feels a bit cheap.
Opening: Incredibly creepy cult footage. Sets the tone well. But leaves questions that the movie refuses to answer.
Closing: Laura carries Cathy’s corpse into the pool and cradles it as the police arrive. The best way it could have ended. I did fear it was going to end with her winning.
Best Line: I’m going to drown you, love.
Original review here

Die My Love
Ups: The two central performances are pretty damn good at times.
More films need to be made about postnatal depression.
Downs: Difficult to figure out what is real at times.
Bad background characters.
Seems like it doesn’t want you to like the characters
Best Performer: Jennifer Lawrence
Best Moment: The build up to the initial sex scene. You genuinely believe they love each other.
Worst Moment: The wedding, none of them come out of it looking good.
Opening: They move into a house, then have sex. Slow-paced.
Closing: They start a fire in the forest, which was alluded to earlier in the film.
Best Line: A thing you love is suffering.
Original review here

Five Nights At Freddy’s 2
Ups: Expands the universe.
The marionette.
The animatronics are great.
The central relationship is still incredibly sweet.
Downs: Feels too neutered.
In debt to much better films.
Best Performer: Piper Rubio
Best Moment: Mike monitoring the animatronics’ movements. Very much in keeping with the original game.
Worst Moment: Vanessa’s hallucinations/nightmare. Not very effectively done.
Opening: The death of Charlotte. Really well done.
Closing: Vanessa has been possessed.
Best Line: It’s so easy to become blinded by ambition even with the best of intentions, you don’t see the devil sitting right beside you.
Original review here

Happy Gilmore 2
Ups: Some nice callbacks.
Believable universe.
Weirdly breaks with tradition by talking about how important tradition is.
Pays lovely tributes to those who have passed
Downs: Repetitive.
Feels very low stakes.
Happy Gilmore is kind of an asshole.
Nepotism. So much.
Too many flashbacks to the first movie, almost as if it doesn’t trust you to remember them.
Best Performer: Bad Bunny
Best Moment: The traditional golfers training. Funny and chaotic.
Worst Moment: Happy’s drunken golf with strangers. It’s an incredibly funny scene, and I loved the other characters. But the fact it kept cutting before the cursewords was weird and felt badly done.
Opening: VERY quick “how we got here”. I’m amazed how effective it was. On the downside, Adam Sandlers narration feels like it was delivered during his lunch break. He then kills his wife, but that’s probably for the best considering how he writes love interests.
Closing: The good guys win, the bad guys not only lose but are humiliated. There’s no other way it could have ended.
Best Line: You look like Freddy Krueger worked at a Starbucks.
Original review here

Him
Ups: Violent.
Intense.
Disturbing
Downs: A tonal mess.
Wastes potential.
Best Performer: Tyriq Wathers
Best Moment: Cam (probably) paralyzing someone. Lets you know the commitment needed.
Worst Moment: The party, too visually messy.
Opening: Young Cam watches Isaiah win a game but severely injure himself. Isaiah then comes back from injury and keeps winning at the same level. Wouldn’t it have been more satisfying narratively if that injury effected his career?
Closing: Mass cult murder. Brutal, and fun, but kind of silly.
Best Line: Transitions of power are never peaceful.
Original review here

I Know What You Did Last Summer
Ups: Some nice callbacks to the original.
Quite funny at times.
Downs: Feels dated
Some people won’t appreciate what it does with legacy characters.
Unlikeable characters.
Some embarrassing callbacks.
Best Performer: Sarah Pidgeon
Best Moment: The death of Wyatt.
Worst Moment: The death of Tyler. Doesn’t play into the killers motivations, either of them. One killer wants revenge on her friends, of which Tyler wasn’t one. The other one is annoyed at the town for having forgotten the murders, Tyler was one of the few people talking about the murders.
Opening: An engagement party. The dialogue meant I automatically hated two of the characters, they were insufferable.
Closing: One of the killers is still alive. This is revealed in casual dialogue. Far too casual. “wearing jeans to your wedding” casual. Tone-deaf.
Best Line: Nostalgia is overrated
Original review here

Roofman
Ups: Sweet at times.
Believable romance.
Leighs characterisation is consistent.
Downs: Should have been a Christmas movie.
Feels too desperate to paint him as a nice guy.
Best Performer: Kirsten Dunst.
Best Moment: When we reveal that Leigh set him up. It would have been too unrealistic to not have her do that.
Worst Moment: The pawn shop break-in. Not followed up on
Opening: Jeffrey needs money to provide for his kid (who he soon forgets about) because otherwise she won’t love him. He decides to steal shit.
Closing: Text saying what happened next. He attempted to escape prison.
Best Line: We both know doing things the right way is not your superpower.
Original review here

The Twits
Ups: Does have some genuinely funny lines and moments.
Margo Martindale and Johnny Vegas are good leads.
Important message.
Accurate representation of modern politics.
Downs: Who’s it for?
Unfocused, going from one plot point to the next without them feeling connected. Feels very episodic.
Not the greatest animation.
Best Performer: Character actress Margo Martindale.
Best Moment: A family coming to an orphanage to refuse taking in an orphan out of fear they’re contagious. Truly crosses the line in a way few films dare to.
Worst Moment: The mayor farting. Even for a kids movie, it’s dumb.
Opening: The framing device; the story is being told by two flies in Mr. Twits beard. We see The Twits have built a theme park. Despite being seen as miserable, they sing a happy song.
Closing: The twits don’t die. Shame.
Best Line: “One of the worst liquid hot dog meat floods in the nations history”
Original review here

The Woman In The Yard
Ups: Makes daylight scary.
Sets up its different narrative pieces well.
Good performances.
Unique.
Feels very grounded
Downs: COMPLETELY falls apart in the final third. Like, drops off a cliff.
Best Performer: Peyton Jackson
Best Moment: The first time we see the woman, it feels MADE for posters.
Worst Moment: The attic moments.
Opening: Ramona watches a video of her deceased husband. It’s weird she filmed that moment, but it’s very sweet, and sets up SOOO much very quickly. Sets up what their relationship was like, sets up that they’re having problems fixing problems in the home, even the way she’s watching it sets up that he’s dead. Genius.
Closing: She decides not to commit suicide, the camera shows a painting signed by Ramona, but backwards. Possibly hinting that she DID in fact, commit suicide. Yay, “your children will be better off if you died” is a totally fine message.
Best Line: Today’s the day.
Original review here

Until Dawn
Ups: Some decent kills.
Bloody.
Decent effects
Downs: Switches between overexplanations and being annoyingly vague.
Survival feels more luck-based than as a reward for smart choices.
No reason to exist.
Best Performer: Ella Rubin
Best Moment: The death of one of the monsters.
Worst Moment: The bathroom scene. Don’t get me wrong, it was enjoyable, it was bloody, and it was entertaining. But it also demonstrated how luck-based the whole premise was. For a game based around “your decisions have consequences”, it’s annoying how the choices have no impact. “Don’t drink water or you’ll explode” is not a lesson.
Opening: One of the characters gets murdered, they’re clearly annoyed at this.
Closing: A car pulls up to a snowy cabin. A clear reference to the game, I assume. It’s shot in such a way that it’s obvious it’s SOMETHING, so I can only assume it’s that. Incredibly unsubtle.
Best Line: Is anyone else growing new teeth?
Original review here

Five Nights At Freddy’s 2 (2025) Review

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

Quick Synopsis: One year has passed since the supernatural nightmare at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. Former security guard Mike has kept the truth from his 11-year-old sister, Abby, concerning the fate of her animatronic friends. When Abby sneaks out to reconnect with Freddy, Bonnie, Chica and Foxy, she sets into motion a terrifying series of events that reveal dark secrets about the true origin of Freddy’s.

I won’t lie, I could just repost my review of the first movie, SOOOO many of my issues with it are repeated here.

It’s a horror movie without gore, without suspense, and without scares. 

Yup, same here. It’s incredibly neutered. I’m not asking for full hardcore violence, but a little bit of blood and more disturbing sound design would have helped sell the violence.

Piper Rubio outshines all of them, though. She’s only 8 years old but never misses a beat, even when she has to express some relatively complex concepts. I haven’t seen a child perform this well since McKenna Grace in Gifted. Her relationship with her brother and her need for social acceptance are a core part of the narrative of FNAF. The moments where it dwells on that are the strongest parts of the film (that and the animatronic work, which is sublime).

The only part of this that is changed is that Piper Rubio is no longer 8. She’s still the strongest performer by a wide margin. Elizabeth Lail seems to be having an off-day; I know she can give a better performance than this. Also, that mention of McKenna Grace seemed to be weirdly prophetic, as she’s also in this. Not for long enough, though, I hope she has more screamtime (pun intentional) in Scream 7.

Like I said, when it’s not a horror movie, when it’s a family drama dealing with loss, that’s when it’s at its best.

Oh, that’s definitely the case here. The relationship between Mike and Abby is core to why this works. The two are so sweet together; so even when the film itself isn’t that entertaining, it’s just so damn nice to watch the interplay between the two.

The continuity lockout is much bigger for this than it was for the first one. If you’re not familiar with the original games, you’ll struggle to work out why certain things are met with dramatic music, or why some of the sentence structures feel clunky and designed to get certain phrases in. I have a slight knowledge of the games, so I recognised some of the references; but there were a few moments which I recognised as references, but didn’t get the references themselves (like when an American sitcom starts talking about NY politicians).

My biggest issue is the ending; it doesn’t really have one, not in the traditional sense anyway. Not in a “the story is complete and we’ve reached a dramatic conclusion” way. It ends with a character being possessed and about to hunt down everyone. That’s not an ending; that’s the third-act setback that leads to the ending. It feels like they cut an entire section out. I also wasn’t happy that seemingly essential plot points were in the middle of the credits. Not a fan of that, if something is important, it should be in the actual film, credits scenes are for fun stuff, not essential.

In summary, incredibly similar to the first one, but with newer mistakes.

2023 In Film: Day Three (The Not Great)

On By troubledproductionsIn Year round upLeave a comment

Dream Scenario

Ups: Unique concept

Good performances

Downs: Kind of dull.

Lacks purpose

Doesn’t seem to know where it wants to take the story

Best Moment: The fart joke.

Worst Moment: The sex scene leading up to that is kind of uncomfortable and not needed.

Best Performer: Cage

Opening: Cage’s daughter dreams of him standing by watching as she floats into the air. It’s a dream, surprisingly.

Closing: Cage transports into his wife’s dream and saves her, while wearing a giant suit.

Best Line: Do you think I could handle the emotional burden of having an affair?

Original Review here

Five Nights At Freddy’s

Ups: The central relationship between the siblings is fantastic.

The animatronics.

Intriguing narrative.

Downs: Feels too neutered.

The universe it creates doesn’t feel real.

How did Afton get a job after killing those kids? Even if you do the “he just changed his name and got fake identification”, the fact he looks like the main suspect in a mass murder case would have raised suspicion.

Constantly reminds you of better films

Best Moment: The fake-out death with Rubio’s character. You do wonder if they would kill a child.

Worst Moment: The reveal of the child murders. Mainly because that kind of thing would become a local legend, so people who live there would know about it, especially if the building was still there.

Best Performer: Piper Rubio

Opening: A security guard is murdered. Lets you know immediately what type of film this is; bloodless and without any sense of tension.

Closing: Everybody smiles and lives together. Oh, and the villain somehow isn’t dead because they want a sequel.

Best Line: “And you only have to worry about one thing. Keeping people out. And, and you know, and keep the place tidy.”

“That’s two things”

Original Review here

Good Burger 2

Ups: Some delightfully dumb dialogue, almost Airplane/Paddington-esque

Unlike the first one, it doesn’t have creepy Dan Schneider.

Downs: The characters haven’t developed since the first one.

Thinks the first one is much more iconic than it is

Very basic plot.

Best Moment: The “rousing speech” which is just Ed standing silently. Somehow, it manages to inspire everybody.

Worst Moment: The car chase scene, mainly because there are some really weird shot choices, random quick cutaways of glasses of water etc before they’re hit.

Best Performer: Kamala Fairburn

Opening: Ed opens up the burger place and starts a musical intro. I don’t want to be rude, but his voice isn’t suited for this. It then turns out he’s been dreaming and he wakes up being shouted at by Pete Davidson. Then see a scene of Dexter as an inventor who burns his house down demonstrating a fireproof spray. I think the fire scene would have been a better opener, it’s more engaging

Closing: Good Burger is reopened, and permanent ice has been invented. An obvious ending. The credit sequence of everyone singing We’re All Dudes is fun though. Especially since they seemed to get the crew in too.

Best Line: “He’s allergic to hippos”

Original Review here

Hypnotic

Ups: Well-performed.

Smarter than you’d think.

Keeps you on your toes.

Downs: Feels a bit too similar to other films which have been done much better

Hard to get emotionally invested.

Wastes potential

Best Moment: The rugpull. Superbly done.

Worst Moment: The post-credits scene. Feels a little optimistic setting up for a sequel.

Best Performer: Affleck

Opening: Affleck in therapy. Whilst watching this I thought this was a mistake, that they should have led with the bank robbery. But when the twist is revealed, I get why they did this.

Closing: The villain has survived. We thought he didn’t, but that was just because we saw a version warped by hypnosis. Not a surprise, but is narratively unsatisfying.

Best Line: I love you… don’t ask me why

Original Review here

Meg 2: The Trench

Ups: Some creative shots

If you like the first one, you’ll like this

Dumb, in an entertaining way

Downs: Doesn’t do enough to stand out

Should be bloodier

Doesn’t feel like a Wheatley film

Depends on you being able to remember a lot from the first film

Best Moment: The exosuit death. Shocking.

Worst Moment: The revelation of the villain, feels too obvious.

Best Performer: Shuya Sophia Cal

Opening: Dinosaurs killing each other.

Closing: The Meg might be pregnant. Sequel!

Best Line: After last time, y’all begged me to come back. “DJ, oh, we family, DJ. DJ, we need you.” Yeah, all right. Bet. But I ain’t stupid. I trained up, I learned how to fight, I learned how to swim, and I will never go anywhere without my survival pack

Original Review here

Talk To Me

Ups: Some good scares

Shows great potential for everyone involved

Downs: Doesn’t quite live up to what it could be.

Best Moment: Riley attempting suicide. Horrific.

Worst Moment: The possession party, only because they could be combined into one.

Best Performer: Sophie Wilde

Opening: A stabbing at a house party. Bit weird as doesn’t show enough to add to the story, it just introduces characters who never matter again. I got what they were going for, but didn’t work for me.

Closing: Mia is dead and finds herself summoned at a party. So we see what it’s like from the spirits’ side.

Best Line: “I let you in”

Original review here

We Have A Ghost

Ups: Has some funny moments.

Has heart.

Good cast

Downs: Odd sup-plots

Not enough funny moments to sustain it.

Best Moment: The TikTok response. It feels so real and how people would respond. It’s also one of the few “goes viral” moments in horror movies that feels legit.

Worst Moment: The Tig Notaro sub-plot, mainly because it goes nowhere.

Best Performer: David Harbour. Mainly because he does the whole thing without saying a word.

Opening: Static shot of a family running out of a house scared. Then the title card. It’s nothing we haven’t seen a hundred times before and it’s weird that THIS was how they chose to open it. A horror comedy has to nail the opening, and there’s nothing here which can be considered a joke or a scare in the opening. They then played the Jim Cornette theme song, which was the first laugh it got from me, and that was completely unintentional.

Closing: “Ernest” moves on. Expected, and very predictable. But handled so well. Annoyingly, it then moves on to another scene of the family moving house. That coda slightly broke the flow. It’s annoying as there’s a personal reveal that is nice to see and completes a narrative, so that’s needed. I just feel the place for it is wrong. If they swapped the scenes over it might have had a slightly better flow.

Best Line: “When your kids are little it’s easy to be a parent. They don’t see who you actually are, they just see the good stuff, what you want them to see. But eventually, as they grow up parts of yourself that you don’t like become harder and harder to hide”

Original Review here

Your Place Or Mine

Ups: I like the way she shoots phone calls. It does a standard split screen, but they’re all in sync.

Interesting idea.

Downs: Actors aren’t playing to their strengths.

The actors don’t share chemistry.

Everybody involved is capable of better.

Doomed by the concept.

Best Moment: The argument scene. Really creatively shot.

Worst Moment: The inciting incident seems too fake.

Best Performer: Notaro

Opening: “It’s 2003. How can we tell?” it then points to early 2000’s fashion choices made by the characters. It’s a fun opening. Even more so when the guy keeps interrupting sex to talk about short stories he’s written.

Closing: “They lived happily ever after. Just kidding, marriage is hard, but they had a good life”

Best Line: “Notes on parenting from someone whose only pet was a goldfish that died in a bong fire”

Original Review here

Five Nights At Freddy’s (2023) Review

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

Quick Synopsis: Mike (Josh Hutcherson) gets a job as a night security guard at an abandoned family entertainment centre with animals are that animatronic, sociopathic, hydromatic, why they’re greased lightning! Wait, not greased lightning, murderers, I’m always getting those two mixed up.

Should start this review of Five Nights At Freddy’s (FNAF, pronounced Fon-arf) pointing out that I really don’t give a shit about youtube culture. I watch Dead Meat and History Buffs etc, but the whole “hey guys, it’s your boy here” bullshit accompanied by atrocious camera cuts, overacting reactions to everything like “So I was playing Mario and OMG you guys, OMG you guys, I found a coin”. As such, I’m not really a part of what seemed to be a huge selling point for this movie; that it featured popular YouTubers. It is based on a famous franchise, but when I had conversations with the intended target audience the things they mentioned were the potential cameos. I’m glad that they didn’t cast them as main characters, but the fact that cameos are the main features of a film is a bad sign.

I’ll admit, I’m not that familiar with the franchise, but that shouldn’t matter. I’ve seen some comments about the negative review FNAF has got, basically saying “A lot of the negative reviews are from people who haven’t played the games”. Well, yeah. It has to be good enough to stand up on its own merits, it’s not a sequel, it’s a separate iteration, and the games should be irrelevant. You shouldn’t need to be a fan of the games to enjoy this film.

Thankfully, it’s a pretty easy film to follow, there are no moments where you feel you had to be a fan of the franchise to understand what was going on. There’s no doubt that it would improve things, though. Because there’s still a level of excitement for seeing characters and references on the big screen. I’m assuming that’s why fans of the game like the film anyway, as there’s not really anything else going on. It’s a horror movie without gore, without suspense, and without scares. The performances are good though, mostly. There’s one moment where Josh Hutcherson is a little too OTT and it feels like he’s “acting” rather than being, but when he’s a scared and withdrawn adult haunted by his demons, he nails it. Matthew Lillard is great as always, but his being seemingly cast as a throw-away character almost feels like a spoiler as to who he really is. Piper Rubio outshines all of them though. She’s only 8 years old but never misses a beat, even when she has to express some relatively complex concepts. I haven’t seen a child perform this well since McKenna Grace in Gifted. Her relationship with her brother, and her need for social acceptance, is a core part of the narrative of FNAF. The moments where it dwells on that are the strongest parts of the film (that and the animatronic work which is sublime).

A big issue is that you’re constantly reminded of better films. Willy’s Wonderland explored similar concepts a few years ago, so whilst watching FNAF my brain was like a politician who just voted to criminalise homosexuality, I just couldn’t stop thinking about Willy. I’m not sure if that joke works outside of the UK as I’m not certain “willy” is slang for penis in the US etc, but I’m sure now that I’ve explained the joke, that’s only made it funnier.

Like I said, when it’s not a horror movie, when it’s a family drama dealing with loss, that’s when it’s at its best. The horror aspects just don’t work. Probably because of the rating, it’s incredibly bloodless, with obvious camera cutaways obscuring what you want to see. This would be fine if there was an air of menace, but there’s not. The lack of menace isn’t helped by how it feels too written, there’s no grounding it in reality. I don’t mean in terms of “well this would never happen, robots wouldn’t be that sophisticated”, I mean it in a “these characters only exist in this film”, you don’t get the feeling anything has happened before the film starts. Put it this way; if you lived in a small town and there was a family restaurant that has been abandoned for years, you’d notice wouldn’t you? And if a bunch of kids went missing and the owner of the restaurant was accused, you’d notice, wouldn’t you? And if the owner of that restaurant then got a government job helping unemployed people back to work, that would be a story, wouldn’t it? But the main character has never heard of the restaurant before he starts working there, isn’t aware of children being kidnapped, and didn’t link it to his brothers’ disappearance. He also doesn’t seem to have done anything about the dead bodies that pile up, one of which is in his house and is a woman he’s had an intense legal battle with. But nope, nothing indicating he’s been accused of killing her, no indication about what he did with the body, we didn’t see the aftermath, so there is no aftermath. It’s lazy, and it’s an issue that could be easily dealt with if the screenwriters were paying attention. But who needs rewrites, right?